Smartass.
It was a perhaps-inappropriate use of hyperbole, I'll give you that.
But in the interest of SCIENCE, I just asked my Apple geek friends via IM and all my Twitter followers (about 1500) and no one who responded has had any problems.
Not at all
If I were being a 'smartass' I'd have suggested that you mustn't have many friends.
(But now you tell me you have 1500 Twitter followers
so you deprived me that indulgence.)
Some people look after their things, and some don't.
This is true, but what it means to 'look after things' isn't black and white. There are people who trash their stuff, people who place their stuff behind display cabinets on beds of cotton wool, and everyone in between. I've already said that I never remove the connector by pulling on the cable, as some commentors insist we must have done. I have never knowingly done this. But I have also said that I sometimes use a device while it is charging, which means that a certain amount of movement is going to happen, and this movement invariably tends to focus on the point at which the cable meets the connector. IMO, this is a reasonable amount of care for what the product is designed to do, and a cable ought to stand up to such use. You can blame damage on the user, for not nursing there cable through life as some people must do,
or you can look to the designer to make things more durable.
This whole issue of some people not taking care of their stuff reminds me of the discussion about the glass back on the iPhone 4 and 4S. Some people fall into the Apple-can-do-no-wrong camp, and emphasise that the phone is a delicate piece of high-tech equipment which needs to be treated like fine china. Then there's the other group (of which I am one), which believes the purpose of the product dictates how durable it really ought to be. In this case, we're talking about a mobile phone which, by nature of its very purpose and design, is out and about in different environments and at risk of being dropped from time to time. Obviously people need to take care to avoid this, but sometimes it will happen. Currently there is a divide between the ideal durability of these products, and the reality. But Apple widened that divide with the iPhone 4 by doubling the amount of glass in the product, and they did this for aesthetic reasons. That's not an opinionthose are the facts. Some consumers will happily make the trade, others will not. But let's not put all the blame on the user, when Apple has the ability to make things more durable than they sometimes do.
The unibody design of their laptops is a great example of where a new process improved
both aesthetics and durability. This is the kind of excellence I personally expect from Apple. Apple has built a brand on going the extra mile, of paying meticulous attention to even the smallest details of their product designs, to delight the user at every turn. They haven't done this with the design of these cables. I know they could design something better.
